Omega Holdings, the JSE-listed consumer electronics group whose subsidiaries include Frank & Hirsch, Telefunken SA and Tek are spending more than R3-million to create a single computing platform on which to strengthen group operations.
The R400-million a year group, whose major shareholders include Shanghai Industrial Investment Holdings and Standard Bank, restructured after what Financial Director, Patrick Ching Sing Li, describes as "an aggressive acquisition trail".
"We`re now a leaner and meaner team, but we wanted to make sure that leaner didn`t mean less efficient, so we`ve invested heavily in a computer system that will ensure we deliver improved service levels to our customers and our principles."
After extensive evaluations and a pilot implementation at its group technical service subsidiary, TechniFix, Omega is standardising on the South African-developed, ERP system, ACS EMBRACE, running on the Unix-based HP 9000 hardware platform.
"We chose EMBRACE because it`s a totally integrated system developed and supported locally. It`s got an impressive user base including leading distributors with many thousands of product lines, so it`s ideal for us," says C S Li.
Omega represents brand-leading consumer goods vendors such as Telfunken, Aiwa, Autodek and Alpine as well as Shanghai Hitachi, Silver, Tecnol and Tempest.
"Being able to hold the right inventory, manage stock and distribute effectively is vital for organisations such as Omega," says Viv Wright, Sales Manager, at ACS.
EMBRACE, which now has more than 60 sites nationwide, also delivers the tight inter-company financial integration that a rapidly growing group of companies needs, he adds, as well as provide access to critical corporate data.
"In today`s economic climate, a company can lose a lot of business if it can`t react quickly to rapidly changing situations. I believe EMBRACE will help us become more responsive as well as more efficient," says C S Li. After its various acquisitions, the group ended up with three different and old computing systems, which made it virtually impossible to consolidate group activities.
"We had to standardise on a single integrated system for the whole of the group and after several months` evaluation we decided to try EMBRACE initially at TechniFix Johannesburg," he says.
After three months trials, the system was rolled out to six other TechniFix operations nationwide at the end of 1999 and the decision made to implement the system throughout the group by April this year."We`re already seeing what it can do in terms of identifying problem products and parts and providing service history management reports," says Alec Lau, Financial Director, at TechniFix.
"This is going to provide valuable feedback to our principles and help us enhance our support capabilities and improve the service we provide our customers."
One improved customer service is the system`s ability to view parts and inventories throughout the company so that those items out of stock in one branch can be sourced from another instantly.
"The benefits of the system can`t be quantified yet, but we know we will get a substantial return on our investment in terms of efficiencies, and better and more accurate information," concludes C S Li.
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